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Alphabet picture cards

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Today I’m sharing a giant set of free picture cards for developing vocabulary, promoting critical thinking, and learning alphabet sounds!

These free printable alphabet cards are gorgeous! Love the bright colors... and they have at least 4 pictures for every letter!

(This post contains affiliate links.)

Today I’m excited to share a project I’ve spent many hours on…  alphabet picture cards.  If you print the whole download, you get 192 bright photo cards for all kinds of early learning!

I printed the pages on cardstock, laminated them, and cut them apart.  Now I have a beautiful set of cards that will last for years!

10 ways to use my alphabet picture cards

These FREE printable alphabet picture cards are gorgeous! Love the bright colors... and they have at least 4 pictures for every letter!

1. Talk about the pictures.  My Two was very excited when he saw the cards and wanted to look at the pictures with me.  He sat by the window with a small stack and named each picture, with my help.  While your child may not want to use them this way, you can talk about the pictures as you sit together.

“What’s this called?  What can you do with it?  Is it something you would like to eat?  Where would you find it?”

(Note: These are not designed to be flash cards.  Please remember that young children have short attention spans and may lose interest after a handful of cards.  No problem!)

These free printable alphabet cards are gorgeous! Love the bright colors... and they have at least 4 pictures for every letter!

2. Find the picture.  Put the cards out in a grid and name the one you want your child to find.  This is excellent vocabulary building for toddlers and young preschoolers, who may not know as many words as you think they do.

 Case in point:  Our Two (soon to be three) is a bright little boy, but often mixes up basic vocabulary.  For the longest time whenever a fly came into our house, he would yell, “A bee! A bee!”  One day he announced confidently, “Flies make honey!”  🙂

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These free printable alphabet cards are gorgeous! Love the bright colors... and they have at least 4 pictures for every letter!

3. Sort the pictures.  We started by sorting the pictures into things we can eat and those we can’t.  For a sorting exercise, you’ll probably want to go through the cards and select a stack that will work well for the activity.

Try these sorts for toddlers and preschoolers:

animals / not animals
things we wear / things we don’t wear
things in our house / things outside
food I like / food I don’t like
 

These are more challenging and are best for older preschoolers and up:

living / nonliving
needs / wants
 
These free printable alphabet cards are gorgeous! Love the bright colors... and they have at least 4 pictures for every letter!

4. Which one doesn’t belong?  This will take a little bit of preparation on your part, but it’s worth it for a fun activity!  Set up four cards, and have your child find the picture that doesn’t belong.

The possibilities are endless!  You can make these simple or challenging.  Here are just a few ideas.  Can your child find the one that’s different?

3 foods and 1 animal
3 healthy foods and 1 junk food
3 real animals and 1 toy animal
3 vegetables and 1 fruit
3 toys and 1 food
3 musical instruments and 1 household object
 

5. Find the rhyming picture.  Set out a few cards and name a word that rhymes with one of the pictures. Have your child find its matching rhyme. You can use nonsense words too!  Don’t be afraid to say, “Can you find the word that rhymes with bapple?”

6. Find the picture with 1, 2, or 3 syllables.  For example, put out the carrot, bat, and ambulance cards.  Tell your child to find the picture whose name has just one syllable.  Help him clap the words so he can identify “bat” as the correct answer.

These free printable alphabet cards are gorgeous! Love the bright colors... and they have at least 4 pictures for every letter!

7. Sort by beginning sound.  When you print the alphabet cards (available as a separate download), you can use them as headers for the columns.   Give your child just two sets of cards, for two different letters. Help him identify the beginning sound and sort.

8. Sort by ending sound.

9. Can you find the mystery picture?  Before children are ready to learn to read, they need to be able to hear how sounds come together. You can practice this with these cards.  Put out a set of cards and tell your child, “One of these is the mystery picture!  Here’s my clue.  I want you to point to the answer.”

Then say the sounds of a word, pausing in between each sound.  For example: “/a/ /p/ /l/.”   Eventually your child will be able to hear how the sounds come together to make a word, and he’ll choose the picture of the apple.

10. Which picture doesn’t belong? 

This time, instead of focusing on what the pictures mean, focus on the words themselves.  Help your child know what you’re looking for.

All of these pictures start with the same letter, except one. Which one doesn’t belong?
All of these have 3 syllables, except one. Which one doesn’t belong?
All of these end with the /t/ sound, except one. Which one doesn’t belong?
 

What you’ll get in the download:

  • 8 bright photo cards for each letter (but only 4 for letters q, x, y, and z)
  • For each vowel, you’ll find 4 pictures for the short sound and 4 pictures for the long sound.
  • For letters c and g, you’ll find 4 pictures for the hard sound and 4 pictures for the soft sound.

Want to save printer ink?

Print the smaller set.  You’ll get just 4 pictures for each letter, but you’ll still get 8 total pictures for each vowel.  You’ll also have 8 total pictures for letters c and g.

How to print

These free printable alphabet cards are gorgeous! Love the bright colors... and they have at least 4 pictures for every letter!

Print the pages front to back, starting on page 2. (Page 1 is my Terms of Use.)  Be sure to set it up to flip on the short side.  Do a practice page first!  The backs of the cards are the names of each picture (see above). If you don’t want those, just print the even numbered pages.  Be sure to print on cardstock to make these sturdy!  If you laminate them, they should last for years.

How to store

These FREE printable alphabet picture cards are gorgeous! Love the bright colors... and they have at least 4 pictures for every letter!

This may be the coolest part! I designed the cards to fit in 3×5 index card boxes.  Get a long box or two smaller ones to store the entire set (the smaller set will store in just one small box).  Be sure to get some A-Z dividers so you can find what you need in a hurry.

Get your free alphabet picture cards!

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

Alphabet Curriculum for Preschool

$29.00

Our curriculum includes lessons for teaching both upper and lowercase letter names and sounds. You’ll get three lessons per letter, built-in review, simple handwriting practice, rhyming, syllable counting, phonemic awareness, and a whole lot more!

Buy Now

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Reader Interactions

64 Comments

  1. Gracie

    Thank you so much for these! They are fantastic!
    Would it be possible to get a page with blank boxes so I can create a couple Canadian picture cards for my littles (like our Canadian flag, a map of Canada, and our Canadian quarter)?

    Reply to this comment

  10. Nicola

    Hi Anna
    Thanks for all your great resources !

    I have a problem when printing out the alphabet cards the words don’t match up with the picture e.g. Behind apple is astronaut
    Apricot is ambulance
    Astronaut is apple
    Ambulance is apricot
    Do you have any suggestion?
    Thanks a lot!
    P.S. Congratulations on the birth of your baby, hope that you are getting enough sleep.

    Reply to this comment

    • Anna Geiger

      Hi Nicola!
      Thank you for your patience in waiting for my reply. For me, it only works to print these when I print with Adobe Acrobat. You need to download this free program to your computer https://get.adobe.com/reader/ . Then RIGHT CLICK and choose “Save link as” for the file you want to use. Name it whatever you want. Then open the file using Adobe Reader. When you print, choose front to back AND “flip on the short side.” That’s the key to getting it to print correctly.

      Reply to this comment

  12. Nissi

    These are wonderful cards! Unfortunately i cant seem to download them, and when I try to print from the web it wont allow me to use the short side flip to get the words on the back. Is there another link I can try to download from? Thanks

    Reply to this comment

  14. Daniela

    Hi! These picture cards are beautiful! Just wondering if you have a master list of all the words in this set? I’d like to put them in boxes in alphabetical order as you suggested, but keep a master list of the pictures I have available so I can quickly pull cards when I need them (e.g. know how many animals I have in my A-C section, D-F section etc., if I was working on identification of animals for example). Hope that makes sense.

    Thanks!

    Reply to this comment

  18. Lorene Sexton

    These cards are perfect! Thank you so much for all the time and effort it took you to gather these pictures to go with each letter. I just started teaching in an Adult Literacy Program and these are so much more dignified for adults rather than other flashcards geared for Pre K children. I can’t wait to show her.
    Great job Anna!
    Sincerely,
    Lorene

    Reply to this comment

    • Anna Geiger

      That’s wonderful, Lorene! I love to hear when my printables can be used for adult learners too. You might want to check out my level 3 handwriting pages (see the handwriting tab in the menu bar) if you are teaching penmanship. I’ve heard from other readers that those are good for adults.

      Reply to this comment

  19. Veronica Mobley

    I just saw these on Pinterest, I have only been teaching three year olds for about six months and need teaching materials with pictures. I am excited that I saw these and all your other items. Thank you for all your hard work and all you suggestions on how to use them.

    Reply to this comment

  22. Lisa

    Anna,
    I love all of your teaching materials. May I ask what type of printer you have that can handle all of these picture cards? If I print these, my printer will run out of ink by the fourth page. What printer do you recommend?
    Thanks,
    Lisa

    Reply to this comment

    • Anna Geiger

      Hi Lisa! I have an HP Laser Jet Pro 400 color printer, which is a top of the line printer. However, I had a Canon Pixma for years, which could have handled this without a problem. Hope that helps!

      Reply to this comment

  24. Dean Lottinger

    WOW! these are so great! I teach Pre-K Inclusion and these are going to be so helpful! The size is perfect for small group work. I really like the list of ways to use them. God bless you for the many hours you put in to help so many others! I’ll put these to good use.

    Reply to this comment

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